What is judder?
How Did the TNG Remaster "Not Turn a Profit?"
- Thread starter Cryogenator
- Start date
I'm a little confused by which copyright rule applies here - my prior understanding was that (with a great many exceptions and anomalies) it was 95 years after publication for anything published up to the end of 1977, then 70 years after all authors' deaths for anything published from 1978 onwards.
Reading the legislation, though, it seems that publication+95 still applies to "works made for hire". It's not clear from that text alone if episodes of TV shows (where the writer obviously is employed by the production company) are covered by that. If not, most of Berman-era Star Trek will be under copyright well into the 22nd century.
Choppy motion from the CGI being converted from 30fps to 24fps to match the live action, fully explained here.
Yes, they are works for hire, so their copyrights expire 95 years after release, or 120 years after creation, whichever is shorter. The official expiration date is always on the first day of the 96th (or 121st) year. The same applies to anonymous and pseudonymous works.
Jennifer Jenkins said:
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Exactly this. Those who would be interested in a remastering project most likely already have P+. They know they're not gonna gain a bazillion new subscribers with this because Star Trek is and will always be a niche fandom/franchise, especially compared to Star Wars and all the Marvel stuff.
There's a pretty big anniversary coming up soon. I doubt they'll have a movie ready to go...so who knows.
Mojo has been occasionally posting lightwave renders of Voyager in HD on Facebook and Mark Altman has said that positive things about Paramount looking for SFX vendors.
The day is coming -- if it hasn't passed already -- when audiences are simply not going to look at standard def media. They expect shows to be in HD, and I can't blame them. Any show that's not in HD risks being lost to history.
Mojo has been occasionally posting lightwave renders of Voyager in HD on Facebook and Mark Altman has said that positive things about Paramount looking for SFX vendors.
The day is coming -- if it hasn't passed already -- when audiences are simply not going to look at standard def media. They expect shows to be in HD, and I can't blame them. Any show that's not in HD risks being lost to history.
I have to respectfully disagree. If the characters are interesting and the storyline compelling, I’ll be happy on a nine inch B&W portable. Make me care and I’m there.
I don't know if snooker is a big deal over in America, but here in the UK, it gets a lot of viewers. Famously, the snooker commentator Ted Lowe, uttered the immortal phrase, "and for those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green" during one of his commentaries.
I agree here, and having recently rewatched several older films with my teens, they didn't worry over the HD. They enjoyed the story and characters.
TNG's season sets also were initially very expensive. Too expensive for casual fans and that didn't help. There's is absolutely no shame in letting prices drop before you buy. That's just good money management and I am positive studios and labels are well aware that MSRP will be paid by die hard fans at most, and mot even all of them. They know that's not enough to turn a profit, especially with Star Trek.
So then, a while later, prices drop. Then people buy them. I could have bought Shout Factory's Six Million Dollar Man blu ray set for $179. But I waited and got it for $110.
But the sales of TNG's season sets were enough to get a complete set out there. This is also SOP these days. I didn't buy all of the season and half season sets of Gunsmoke over the years it took for that show to hit DVD, but I did get the complete series box set. But only once it dropped to $170. Which for that series is a steal (and it's too long for another HD release).
People tend to worry more about "the black bars." They have a widescreen TV and want the entire thing filled. Other than that, DVDs still sell.
Thing is, most people today don't do a great deal of rewatching. There's too much new content out there. Generation X grew up on limited channels and daily reruns of old shows. We rewatched EVERTYTHING - that's how Star Trek survived. Sure, there are exceptions: Friends and Seinfeld are here to stay, and a few more. But mostly it seems like the older generation is the one that relives older shows enough to buy them on physical media or care when they drop off streaming.
I'm sure TNG is turning a profit 12 years after the BD releases. But Paramount doesn't want long term investments, they want a fast turnaround. And DS9/Voyager blu rays aren't a sure win. But there is an argument for streaming, which I think they may eventually invest in. But it won't drive P+'s numbers up. Star Trek fans are already there.
So then, a while later, prices drop. Then people buy them. I could have bought Shout Factory's Six Million Dollar Man blu ray set for $179. But I waited and got it for $110.
But the sales of TNG's season sets were enough to get a complete set out there. This is also SOP these days. I didn't buy all of the season and half season sets of Gunsmoke over the years it took for that show to hit DVD, but I did get the complete series box set. But only once it dropped to $170. Which for that series is a steal (and it's too long for another HD release).
People tend to worry more about "the black bars." They have a widescreen TV and want the entire thing filled. Other than that, DVDs still sell.
Thing is, most people today don't do a great deal of rewatching. There's too much new content out there. Generation X grew up on limited channels and daily reruns of old shows. We rewatched EVERTYTHING - that's how Star Trek survived. Sure, there are exceptions: Friends and Seinfeld are here to stay, and a few more. But mostly it seems like the older generation is the one that relives older shows enough to buy them on physical media or care when they drop off streaming.
I'm sure TNG is turning a profit 12 years after the BD releases. But Paramount doesn't want long term investments, they want a fast turnaround. And DS9/Voyager blu rays aren't a sure win. But there is an argument for streaming, which I think they may eventually invest in. But it won't drive P+'s numbers up. Star Trek fans are already there.
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An argument could be made that shows designed to be watched on the 9" black and white tv look better there than on an HD TV. But most people don't have a Tube TV to watch old content.
Last year I actually got myself a vintage 80s Sony CRT TV set, managed to hook it up to my blu-ray player to play my old Next Generation DVDs in SD. And yeah, as much as I’m a sucker for the remastered version and its crystal clear, cinematic image, this actually does look really nice. Instantly takes me back to being a kid and watching the show for the first time.
I think $5.7 million on week one was impressive for sales. If we assume they spent $20 million on the project, and season 1 made $10 million total then they probably turned a small profit eventually.
What probably prompted the "disappointing" moniker is they probably made more money at the time licensing it to Netflix/Hulu.
What probably prompted the "disappointing" moniker is they probably made more money at the time licensing it to Netflix/Hulu.
That's a good point, it's not just if the project earned out, it's if it made a significant profit over what they were getting from streaming and DVD sales of the SD version. If they made more money than they would've otherwise form producing the HD versions, but a significant amount of that extra money went into covering the expense of making them in the first place, there could be other projects they could spend on with better returns.
To make the comparison, they already have and are selling DS9 and VGR in some form, they'll continue making some amount of money from them indefinitely, though not as much as they did when they were new. The question is, does having DS9 and VGR in HD instead of SD bring in more new money than an all-new season of, say, SNW? Are as many people going to buy the Blu Rays of the old shows (at a significantly greater cost) than the discs of one new season? Maybe not, a lot of those people already have them on DVD if they're the kind of people to still buy discs. Are people going to sign up for Paramount+ when the DS9 or VGR HD versions go up there they way they will when a new season of DSC or PIC or SNW comes out? Almost definitely not.
It probably still pencils out in the long, long term, but, one, no one cares about the long term in this high-turnover world (oh, boy, in ten years, someone else could be making 2% more money from Star Trek if all the old shows are in HD), and, two, it's a very slight bend in the curve compared to the explosion of activity from an all-new show.
By the same token, they could remaster DS9 and VOY for a fraction of the cost of a new season of a show...
I think they could do something of a mid-effort. Utilize the evil AI tools, run the episodes through an algorithm, upscale and do some color grading on them. I don't think we need true HD 4k remasters, but there are tools out there to relatively cheaply improve and "remaster" video.
The layoffs just announced may push the rumored DS9 remaster back. :/
Well, speaking of B&W films, to me they look their absolute best when properly scanned to HD and presented in a format that showcases all the visual detailing as well as deep black levels and proper contrast and depth, and the subtle texture of film grain. It makes it look much, much more filmic than a jagged, washed-out standard-definition presentation. I recently watched Sweet Smell of Success (1957) on Criterion blu-ray, and it was visually brilliant. That's how a movie is supposed to look, plain and simple. This is by definition a visual medium, so the visual quality needs to be at a high level to be presentable at all. Unless it's some cult "grindhouse" type of thing that's supposed to look like garbage on purpose.
As far as remastering 1990s TV shows that were originally mastered on video instead of film, that's a whole different ballgame. To really make them look right, the TNG and X-Files route is really the way to go; scanning in the original film sources where available. And for shots where there were none, then uprez from SD was of course the only thing they could possibly do. And due to technical limitations of the time of those remasters (early to mid 2010s), those shots stick out like a sore thumb. It's similar with the shabby-looking exterior ship shots in early episodes of ENT. But technology has come along a way since then, so maybe DS9 and VOY could now get away with a cutting-edge AI-assisted method for everything like evilchumlee mentions above. My dream solution would be to do that only on effects shots since IIRC they were never mastered on film in the first place, but do proper film scans for all the shots with people (assuming the film reels are still around). But that would undoubtedly be cost-prohibitive, and a "good enough" solution might be fine especially as DS9 and VOY aren't at the "prestige" level of TNG.
Kor
As far as remastering 1990s TV shows that were originally mastered on video instead of film, that's a whole different ballgame. To really make them look right, the TNG and X-Files route is really the way to go; scanning in the original film sources where available. And for shots where there were none, then uprez from SD was of course the only thing they could possibly do. And due to technical limitations of the time of those remasters (early to mid 2010s), those shots stick out like a sore thumb. It's similar with the shabby-looking exterior ship shots in early episodes of ENT. But technology has come along a way since then, so maybe DS9 and VOY could now get away with a cutting-edge AI-assisted method for everything like evilchumlee mentions above. My dream solution would be to do that only on effects shots since IIRC they were never mastered on film in the first place, but do proper film scans for all the shots with people (assuming the film reels are still around). But that would undoubtedly be cost-prohibitive, and a "good enough" solution might be fine especially as DS9 and VOY aren't at the "prestige" level of TNG.
Kor
Rumored?
Oh my
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